Andre is still on pace for over 1,000 receiving yards. Y'all are making this a bigger deal than it is. At this point, keeping him healthy for the playoffs is much more important than throwing him tons of bombs to pad his stats. Being the best receiver on a great football team is much more important than being the best receiver on an expansion team, which is what the bulk of Andre's career consisted of.

This. I do not know about y'all but I want to win the Superbowl. Keeping Andre healthy is crucial to the playoff success of this team. I have no problems with the decrease in plays and targets.

And by the way, watching from the stands yesterday made me notice how much he comes out. We are being extremely cautious.

This is such a fantasy football driven "issue" vs. real football. Andre is #12 in the AFC in yards and #10 in TDs in the real world which isn't too shabby considering he finished 43rd in yards and only had 2 tds all season last year. If you could draw up the first 1/4th of the season and place us at 4-0 with a healthy AJ only needing to be targeted 6 times per game and catching 4 of them at 17 yards per reception, I'd take that in a heartbeat. We have New York, Green Bay, and Balt coming up to get to the bye week which was certainly the critical 3 game stretch I had circled when the schedule came out. Having a healthy trinity of Schaub, AJ, and Arian for these games was a huge priority and the fact that we've barely needed to show any of our cards before these games leaves us with a full deck of plays designed for AJ against the top defenses to pull out the next few weeks. I do suspect at least one of those gets played this week in the Jets game where I suspect AJ gets his 10k coronation. AJ would be the first to tell you he cares more about team performance at this juncture than individual accolades, but I also suspect that when these games get closer we will revert to our usual AJ dependence.

Exactly, if you watch the sidelines towards the end of these first 4 games, Kub and Dre are standing right next to each other and smirking it up, he's happy with winning. Look at the Lions, they target Calvin Johnson 12 times yesterday and get 5 catches for 54 yards, Id rather not throw our offense out of rhythm by dedicating 12 plays to 1 player.

Just stop it. Calvin got nothing for me in fantasy yesterday while Brian Hartline sat on my bench. The Lions needed to force it to him 12 MORE times yesterday as far as I'm concerned and my boy Ireland needed to give me some warning about the pending Hartline onslaught._________________

Just another thought on Andre - Can he reach 11,000 this season?
sounds out of the question but its really not a huge stretch

he currently sits at 10,218 which puts him at 782 with 8 games left or just 98 yards a game over the last 8

Over the last three games, he's averaging 93 yards/game. Not TOO bad of a clip, and with some defenses that can give up big plays in the passing game, he could have a nice string of games to get him to 11,000.

AJ was on 610 Radio this morning; He was talking about how his approach to the prep leading up to the game has changed, and that is putting him in a spot to where he feels better than ever. He's cleaned up his diet (not like Arian, but the diet is better) and he spends time with the trainers every day, working on his stretching and going through rehab-like procedures to keep his body loose and in optimal position to recover.

This has led him to believe that he feels faster and more explosive over the past few weeks; He openly admitted to not "feeling" as fast or explosive early on this season, but as the season continued...he felt his extra gear kicking in when he needed it. He says he felt the most explosive he's ever felt this past Sunday, and I think the stats have shown it.

This all might be "media-speak" to answer questions regarding his age and health, but worthy of note. I'm sure all NFL players have a pretty detailed stretch regimine in their season and off-season plans, but if AJ has incorporated some methods such as yoga or pilates into his usual routine, he might find his legs and torso feel looser and more capable of generating the type of explosion he had in his mid 20s.

I'm hoping this is the case. We could use a mid 20s AJ. _________________

A monster game by Andre raises the odds that he reaches or surpasses 11,000 yards this season, and also gets him back into the top 10 WR talk as well as punches his ticket to the pro bowl, hopefully he wont be able to play in it, but when looking towards the Hall Of Fame the number of Pro Bowls is a nice selling point

he currently sits at 10,526 putting him just 474 yards away with 6 games left or 79 yards per game

already its looking like next season will be a drive for 12,000 but what would it take for him to reach 13,000 next season?

a realistic goal (not very likely but realistic) is to shoot for 1,500 yards next season, which would mean to reach 13,000 he would need to finish this season with 11,500 or another 974 yards which is an insane 162 yards per game the rest of this season...likely not going to happen but who thought he would go for 273 tonight???_________________2014 Adopt-A-Texan
Andre Johnson
75 catches 802 yards 2 TD
Carrer marks:
1,002 catches 13,463 yards 63 TDs

A monster game by Andre raises the odds that he reaches or surpasses 11,000 yards this season, and also gets him back into the top 10 WR talk as well as punches his ticket to the pro bowl, hopefully he wont be able to play in it, but when looking towards the Hall Of Fame the number of Pro Bowls is a nice selling point

he currently sits at 10,526 putting him just 474 yards away with 6 games left or 79 yards per game

already its looking like next season will be a drive for 12,000 but what would it take for him to reach 13,000 next season?

a realistic goal (not very likely but realistic) is to shoot for 1,500 yards next season, which would mean to reach 13,000 he would need to finish this season with 11,500 or another 974 yards which is an insane 162 yards per game the rest of this season...likely not going to happen but who thought he would go for 273 tonight???

I honestly don't see Andre breaking 1300 yards a season again. No real support, just a gut feeling._________________"You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas."
-Davy Crockett

A monster game by Andre raises the odds that he reaches or surpasses 11,000 yards this season, and also gets him back into the top 10 WR talk as well as punches his ticket to the pro bowl, hopefully he wont be able to play in it, but when looking towards the Hall Of Fame the number of Pro Bowls is a nice selling point

he currently sits at 10,526 putting him just 474 yards away with 6 games left or 79 yards per game

already its looking like next season will be a drive for 12,000 but what would it take for him to reach 13,000 next season?

a realistic goal (not very likely but realistic) is to shoot for 1,500 yards next season, which would mean to reach 13,000 he would need to finish this season with 11,500 or another 974 yards which is an insane 162 yards per game the rest of this season...likely not going to happen but who thought he would go for 273 tonight???

I honestly don't see Andre breaking 1300 yards a season again. No real support, just a gut feeling.

i think 1300 is very doable, lots of WRs get a 2nd wind after the age of 30....Reggie Wayne is tearing it up this season and he just turned 34

randy Moss turned it on for 3 seasons in his 30s while with the Patriots
Terrell Owens after 10 years in the league had 3 big seasons with Dallas
Jerry Rice had big seasons after 10 years in the league as well

I think that anything short of 15,000 yards and over 1,000 cathces would be considered a let down for Andre.

i see him having 3 more 1200 plus yard seasons before decline really sets in and we see him take a lesser role and produce 2 or 3 500 plus yard seasons

He will be in the top 5 after this week unless someone has a monster game

Last week I said he would need to average 160+ yards to have a shot at 13000 next season, we all assumed that was out of reach but then Andre comes with a 188 game which actually lowers the average to the 150s....still not realistic but if he keeps this up he might catch megatron

Andre sits at 10,714, just 286 yards away from 11,000 (which might mean he reaches it this week )

if he was one of the fastest guys to get to 10,000 i bet he is might be the fastest to go from 10000 to 11000

still looking ahead and to give himself a shot at 13,000 next season he still needs about 786 yards this season over 5 games which is 157 per game, or below his recent average

this would also give him something close to the NFL's all time season yardage with over 1,800 yards

more interesting to watch has been his rise over the last 2 weeks. he has gone from 20th in the NFL to 3rd

He trails Calvin Johnson by 199 yards for the lead, and that might be too much to catch up

we are however playing the 15th, 19th, 27th and 29th ranked pass defenses, none of which has a scary shutdown corner

I honestly think it's all symbiotic; As everyone here knows, we don't throw it unless we have to, and with the defense looking like a Frank Bush unit over the past 10+ days, we've had little choice but to throw it as much as we have.

I think this week is where it slows down - the Titans can be ran on, Ben Tate is slated to return and get a LOT of work (he's as fresh as one can be, might as well give him 20+ touches) and the defense should be able to slow down the Titans offense. AJ should have a moderately good day, but nothing like the last two weeks, I hope.

If he DOES have games like that, it means the defense isn't doing well...and around now, we want the D to start showing off its teeth._________________

we need J-Joe perhaps more than any of them, but our MLB position is really thin with just Sharper and Ruud

i think we might need to win a few more games by outscoring people

While I understand the sentiment, it is important that we keep a 2 game lead on the Pats heading into that game or it becomes a winner take all battle for home field advantage as they would gain the head to head tiebreaker in addition to evening the records. They don't exactly have a cakewalk this week heading to Miami who seemed to get back on track this week and usually play the Pats tough. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest threat to us getting to the Super Bowl is having to play in Foxboro in January when they will have Gronk back and we need to keep the pedal down thru week 15 when beating the Colts hopefully will lock everything up and give us some time to get everyone healthy for the 2nd season. Frankly, I'm kind of glad that the Colts are at least keeping things somewhat interesting in the division, or it would be really easy to get complacent and take a bad loss like to a Tenn team who's season pretty much ended last week.

Will save detailed playoff seeding analysis for later, but know that if there is a 3 way tie with NE, Balt, and us it gets really complicated since presumably head to head would get cancelled out since we would have lost to NE and they lost to Balt. Conf record would be tied as well and we won't have 4 common games so it goes to strength of victory which will likely tip to NE since they have a +163 point diff, vs 116 for us and 64 for them (they compute it per game, but I doubt we'll catch NE there). We CANNOT afford to lose a conference game (aka Titans, Colts) as it's essentially a double hit. The stupid Chargers really did us a disservice by letting Balt convert that 4th and 22 which would have given us much more breathing room (bye bye Norv). The Pats and Ravens still have some tough games out of conference coming up, but if they lose to the 49ers (Pats) or Giants (Ravens) it doesn't hurt them if we drop two conference games. I'm not forgetting about the Broncos who get a chance to get a tiebreaker of their own vs. Balt in Week 15 (Denver already lost to us and NE, so losing to Balt will push them to 4th with a 4 way tiebreaker). Denver has a cupcake schedule remaining aside from that game and perhaps Tampa this week.

Seriously though, understand that there remains a very fine line between us currently having to win two games at Reliant in the playoffs to get to New Orleans and us drawing the dreaded 4th seed which means a 3rd game to play (most likely against a healthy Steelers team?) and having to go to Balt, Denver, or NE in the 2nd round which is no better than last year and all poor weather locations we want no part of with a cutback based offense and a weak legged kicker._________________

main point i was trying to make is that if our D guys need to take the titans game off then it wont be a blow out and Johnson can put up some huge numbers

just read on texans.com that Andre is on pace for over 1,500 yards which would give him 3 1500 yard seasons which is 2nd all time and just 1 behind Jerry Rice...when you start talking about catching up to a jerry rice record, then you are saying something_________________2014 Adopt-A-Texan
Andre Johnson
75 catches 802 yards 2 TD
Carrer marks:
1,002 catches 13,463 yards 63 TDs

another interesting stat i just found is that Andre has the nfl record for most consecutive games with 10+(3) receptions and most games in a season with 10+ pass receptions(7) all this in 2008 when he lead the league in receptions and yards